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Hi, I'm Saabbir.

I'm a frontend engineer in Dhaka. I build Shopify storefronts, make them faster, and run A/B tests to find out whether the things we believe about a store are actually true.

How I got here

I started taking paid work in 2016, while I was still at university studying computer science. It was the usual freelance route — Upwork and ThemeForest, turning PSDs and Figma files into HTML and CSS. Around fifty sites over two years, plus a stretch of email templates, which is a fast way to learn that the web you think you're building for is not the only web there is.

That work taught me CSS properly, mostly out of self-defence. When you build your fortieth site you start noticing that the problem isn't writing the styles, it's finding them again three months later. I still write CSS like someone who expects to come back to it.

In 2018 I joined Inspectiv in Los Angeles, from Dhaka, and spent three years on a security dashboard in React and Vue. Different problem entirely — state, data, and a twelve-hour time difference that meant if I didn't explain myself clearly in writing, nobody could unblock me until the next day.

Then in 2021 I moved to EchoLogyx and into Shopify, which is where I've been since. Themes first, then performance, then testing.

That's the short version of eight years: designs to markup, then applications, then stores, then measuring whether any of it worked.

What I work on now

Mostly Shopify Plus stores, where a small change to a product page is never actually small. Move one thing and you've touched page speed, the conversion funnel, the analytics, and whether the client's team can still edit it in the theme editor — all at once. That's the part I find genuinely interesting.

The other half is experiments. Setting them up, but more importantly deciding what's worth testing and reading the results without kidding yourself. Most tests don't win. A test programme where everything wins is a test programme that's measuring itself wrong.

Saabbir Hossain sitting on rocks at Remarki Fall in Thanchi, Bandarban
Remarki Fall, Thanchi, Bandarban.

Where I've worked

2021 — now

Senior Software Engineer

EchoLogyx, Dhaka

I lead the Shopify frontend team, which means as much mentoring and interviewing as building. Most of the work is themes, tests, and speed audits — why is this page slow, why is the header jumping, why did that test not move anything. Optimizely, AB Tasty, Adobe Target, VWO and Convert, depending on the store.

2018 — 2021

Senior Frontend Engineer

Inspectiv, Los Angeles

A security dashboard in React and Vue, built from Dhaka for a team in California. This is where I learned to work across a twelve-hour gap and write things down properly, because you can't tap someone on the shoulder at 3am their time. Also a lot of WordPress themes and static sites — Gatsby, Eleventy, Nuxt.

2016 — 2018

Freelance frontend developer

Upwork, ThemeForest, CoderPixel

Designs in, HTML and CSS out. Somewhere around 50 sites, plus email templates, which teach you humility fast. This is where I got obsessive about CSS architecture, mostly because I kept having to go back into my own stylesheets and couldn't find anything.

Tools I reach for

Not a ranking, and not everything I've touched — just what I actually use most weeks.

Shopify
Liquid, theme architecture, Shopify CLI, Storefront API, metafields, Alpine.js
Testing
Convert, Optimizely, VWO, Adobe Target, AB Tasty, Kameleoon
Frontend
JavaScript, React, Vue, Nuxt, Astro, SCSS
Analytics
GA4, Google Tag Manager, Looker Studio

Things I built for myself

Personal projects I needed, then left on GitHub.

ios-quirks

A running list of the ways iOS Safari differs from every other browser, with fixes I've actually tested. Started because I kept solving the same problems and forgetting how.

shopify-tab-extension

A Chrome extension that replaces the new-tab page with recent Shopify and web development videos. Built for myself, then left it public.

school-finder-bangladesh

Find schools near you in Dhaka. A small thing, but the kind of problem that is genuinely annoying if you live here.

The rest of my GitHub ↗

Certifications and education

  • Optimizely Certified Experimentation Web Platform Expert

    Optimizely · Nov 2023

    Expert
  • Optimizely Certified Experimentation Practitioner

    Optimizely · Jan 2022

    Practitioner
  • Google Analytics for Beginners

    Google · Aug 2021

    Analytics
  • BSc in Computer Science and Engineering

    Institute of Science, Trade and Technology, Dhaka · 2014 — 2018

    Degree

Want to talk?

Questions about a write-up, or just saying hello — I reply within a day or two.

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